By: Jason KM Oh
Losing weight and getting in shape doesn't happen overnight - it takes effort, focus and determination. Once you understand the basics on losing the body fat and about what it really takes to build a better body, you'll never fall prey to fads, gimmicks or scams ever again.
And don't fall into the trap of wanting to lose 20 pounds in 3 days - heck, just cut off your legs - but seriously, it's not healthy and not manageable. Your aim is to reduce body fat progressively. Here are 6 tips on how to lose weight and keep it off for good -
1. Be Aware of Non Hungry Eating = Become aware of your eating habits, the reasons you may be eating such as stress, boredom or out of habit. Record what you eat for a few days to help increase awareness of the reasons for eating.
2. Sweat It Out - When you train, it's not about chatting about your weekend, or taking it easy on a treadmill- it's all about training hard (with very little rest between moves). Fact is, if you want to shed more pounds, high intensity workouts burn more calories than easy, chat on the treadmill routines.
3. Make Your Workouts Count - If you face plenty of obstacles that conspire to keep you away from the gym such as work deadlines, sick kids and the occasional lack of enthusiasm - you're not alone. However, you can help yourself by planning an excuse proof schedule with time efficient fat burning workouts using interval training and a combination of lower and upper body moves. There require very little time, but challenging enough to stimulate your fat burning hormones. More importantly, for females - weight training is essential and you are better off doing strength training to sculpt your body, and interval training to burn the fat.
4. Keep Your Body Guessing - You have to "keep your body guessing". This is the main principle of a good fat loss program - Variety in strength training and cardio exercise.Even with the best strength and interval programs, you have to vary the routine on a regular basis. If you don't mix it up, your body will not change, adapt, or improve in order to handle the different workouts.
11. Eat Foods That Help You Lose Fat - Eating is a powerful drive so don't starve yourself. Try eating more lean protein , healthy fats and less processed carbs like white bread and chips. The key to a flatter stomach is dropping overall body fat with a healthy diet and regular intense exercise.
12. Stop Weighing, Start Measuring - Get out the measuring tape, a belt or an old pair of jeans instead of the scales. Why? Because the scales can be misleading. Muscle is heavier than fat. You might lose fat and not lose weight if you build some muscle at the same time. If you're leaner, the tape measure might tell you so.
Final word - SKIP THE SCALES AND START MEASURING YOUR BODY COMPOSITION! By measuring your body fat, you take the guesswork out of your health and fitness plan - that way you will get a more accurate picture of your progress with your diet and exercise program. And if you're not too sure if you are losing or gaining muscle, or even losing fat, just measure yourself and know for sure. Based on the results, you will KNOW for sure whether your program is working.
